OSG presses Baguio activist about his abduction

BAGUIO CITY – Lawyers from the Office of the Solicitor General on Friday pressed the brother of a former United States Special Rapporteur about his 2022 abduction in Kalinga province, on the second day of the trial contesting last year’s terrorist designation of four Cordilleran activists at a Baguio Regional Trial Court (RTC).

Steve Tauli, 67, who was declared a terrorist in June 2023 along with Jennifer Awingan-Taggaoa, Sarah Abellon-Alikes and Windel Bolinget, testified that he was taken by six men between 6:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Aug. 20, 2022, pulled into a van and was held captive for 24 hours. Tauli is a sibling of Victoria Tauli Corpuz, who was Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples from 2014 to 2020.

The Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) issued Resolution No. 41 on June 7, 2023 tagging Tauli and the three others as terrorists supposedly for being active members of the armed rebellion. The four only learned they were tagged as terrorists after it was published on July 10 in a national newspaper.

Tauli, Alikes, Taggaoa and Bolinget asked Baguio RTC Judge Cecilia Corazon Dulay Archog to restrain the ATC from enforcing Resolution 41 for violating their constitutional right to due process. They also asked the judge to lift the freeze order issued by the Anti-Money Laundering Council over their bank accounts, which has affected their families.

All four were called to testify by their counsels – Ephrain Corpuz of the National Unions of People’s Lawyers and Jose Molintas, a Baguio City councilor – beginning with Bolinget, chair of the Baguio-based Cordillera People’s Alliance, and Alikes on the first day of trial on Monday. On Friday, Tauli and Taggaoa took the stand.

The OSG lawyers brought up Tauli’s abduction when they quizzed him about perceived inconsistencies between the affidavit he attached to the petitions for certiorari and preliminary injunction filed in Archog’s court, and the affidavit he presented to the Court of Appeals (CA) in 2022.

Targeted

Tauli was also among the 24 Cordillera activists who sought a Writ of Amparo from the CA in 2022, but was denied judicial protection from harassment and red-tagging for their failure to name and establish the “personal circumstances” of policemen and soldiers “who visited their houses, approached them or surveilled them.”

In June last year, the activists had asked the Supreme Court to reverse the Oct. 24, 2022 ruling of the CA. The case is still pending.

When Tauli testified that he was targeted for publicly revealing the abuses and threats committed by uniformed personnel as well as supposed corruption linking politicians, an OSG lawyer remarked: “But it does not involve ATC.”

During OSG’s cross examination of Taggaoa, the activist discussed an incident when she was allegedly offered money by government intelligence officers to divulge information about other activists, and was threatened with lawsuits when she declined.

Taggaoa also testified that she has not moved around the community after Resolution 41 was passed.

“The military in the barrio have been telling [my neighbors] that I am a terrorist. The designation [as a terrorist] is very dangerous. I am so afraid,” she said, particularly after fellow activists were “extrajudicially killed.”

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Antiterrorism Act

During the cross-examination of Bolinget on Monday, the OSG lawyers asked if he respects the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2021 which upheld the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 (Republic Act No. 10592).

“Are you not bound by this decision?” OSG asked Bolinget, who was among the people who challenged the constitutionality of RA 10592. Bagong Alyansang Makabayan chair Teddy Casiño and former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, who also questioned RA 10592, attended the first trial day.

The High Court ruling actually struck down two provisions of the law.

It said the law’s sanctions against forms of protests or civil disobedience that the government believes would incite violence was “overbroad and violative of freedom of expression.”

The SC also set aside a provision that would have allowed the ATC to designate a person or a group as terrorists at the behest of foreign governments and organizations.

The third day of trial is scheduled on Sept. 23.